Ten Thousand Silver Dollars

Longevity!

Those two words exploded like thunder over Chen Mo's nearly despairing heart.

Refining demons and aberrations not only granted their special abilities, but also directly stole varying amounts of their remaining lifespan!

For Chen Mo, whose own lifespan was nearly spent, the temptation was fatal.

As for the danger involved, he had long since ignored it!

"Load! Load everything!" Chen Mo roared inwardly, without the slightest hesitation.

As the Moonlight Treasure Mirror trembled faintly, a glimmer of light seemed to flash across the jade slip's surface.

In the blink of an eye, the loading was complete.

At that moment, an extremely faint sense of cracking suddenly came from the jade slip.

"Crack... crackle..."

A series of delicate, brittle snaps rang out abruptly amid the surrounding din, which had yet to fully die down.

Everyone's gaze instantly shifted from Chen Mo's face to his hand.

The jade slip, with its dark-gold edging and black binding cord, was covered without warning in countless spiderweb-like cracks!

The cracks spread rapidly, covering every inch of jade in the blink of an eye!

Then...

"Crash..."

The entire jade slip completely disintegrated before everyone's eyes!

It broke into more than a dozen fragments of different sizes, spilling from Chen Mo's suddenly relaxed fingers and clattering to the ground.

Its spiritual light vanished completely, and that heart-stirring aura of ancient simplicity disappeared without a trace.

The fragments were dull and ashen, no longer the least bit extraordinary.

Even the pieces of dark-gold edging had grown dim, their spiritual energy entirely gone.

The entire crossroads seemed to have had its sound switched off.

Three or four breaths passed before someone suddenly sucked in a breath.

"It... it broke?!"

"The jade slip... the jade slip actually broke on its own?!"

"My heavens! How could this happen? Wasn't it fine just now? The seal was clearly still glowing!"

Exclamations and cries of regret burst out, even louder than when the jade slip had first appeared.

Everyone was stunned by this sudden turn of events, disbelief written across their faces.

"What broke? Old Tan'er, get the hell out of my way!"

"What the hell is this thing?"

The people who had hurried over from outside looked from the pile of fragments on the ground to Chen Mo, their eyes widening.

"The spiritual essence has dispersed! The treasure has crumbled on its own!" The white-haired elder was the first to sigh. He beat his chest and stamped his feet, stricken with grief.

"I should have known! I should have known! For an ancient jade scroll like this to have survived sealed in Yin Stone until today was already a miracle. The spiritual essence within it had long been like a candle guttering in the wind, its oil burned dry!"

"...Once it was free of its stone casing and exposed to the outside... it was over, all over! A complete ancient inheritance that might have led straight to the Great Dao of immortality has just... just vanished into thin air before our very eyes! A tragedy! What a lamentable sight!"

"Elder Zhang speaks the truth!"

Green-Robed Brother Wang was also crestfallen, shaking his head repeatedly. "Just looking at the jade slip's condition and its seal, one could tell it was unimaginably ancient. Now that its spiritual energy has been utterly exhausted, the last force keeping it intact has dissipated, and of course it crumbled into an ordinary object."

"What a pity, what a pity. This young man had luck enough to shake the heavens, but no blessing to enjoy it. The priceless treasure in his hands turned into a pile of broken jade in an instant!"

"Hahaha! I knew it!" The stocky man finally came to his senses. First, intense disappointment flashed across his face, then it was replaced by gloating delight.

"All flash and no substance. Turns out it was a piece of disposable junk! All that fuss for nothing! Kid, you sure are lucky!"

The surrounding chatter grew even more chaotic.

"Alas, all that effort for nothing. This young man must be heartbroken."

"Maybe it's a blessing in disguise? A man's wealth is his own ruin. Now that the jade slip's broken, half his troubles are gone too."

"The fragments... are they still worth anything? It is ancient jade, after all..."

"That young man seemed to freeze when he held the jade slip just now. Did he sense the inheritance inside? What a pity it broke before he could remember it!"

"How could he? An inheritance protected by that kind of seal isn't something you can remember from one glance! Unless he has a special bloodline or a treasured artifact... but he doesn't look like he does."

Amid the waves of regret and mockery, Chen Mo, at the heart of the storm, finally moved.

As if only just recovering from the enormous blow, he swayed. "Good heavens, what a calamity!"

Chen Mo looked at his empty palm, then at the pile of fragments on the ground, now devoid of spiritual light.

He hurriedly reached out with trembling fingers, almost frantically picking up the larger pieces from the ground.

"How could it... break..."

His vacant gaze settled on the fragments in his palm. He looked so distraught, so devastated by the blow, that anyone who saw him would have believed his heartbreak was genuine.

"Fellow Daoist... please accept my condolences." Seeing him like this, Brother Wang felt a touch of sympathy and offered words of comfort. "It was fate. There's no defying it."

Just as Chen Mo was standing there in a daze, a somewhat shrill voice suddenly rang out from the edge of the crowd.

"Oh, what a pity, what a pity. A perfectly good antique, broken just like that. But..."

Everyone followed the voice and saw a gaunt, middle-aged man in a silk robe, with a pair of rat-like whiskers, pushing his way through the crowd.

He rubbed his hands together, his little eyes darting between the pile of fragments on the ground and Chen Mo. A shrewd smile played across his face.

"But broken jade is still jade, and ancient jade is rarer still. Young man," he said warmly, cupping his hands toward Chen Mo, who still had his head lowered. "You have no use for these fragments now, and they're sharp enough to cut you. Why not... let me have them?"

His words brought the crowd to an abrupt silence, followed by louder laughter and chatter.

"Pfft! That pile of broken stones? Someone actually wants it?"

"That's Hu San, trying to pick up a bargain again? It's broken into crumbs. What kind of bargain could there be?"

"Hu San, are you so poor you've gone mad? You'll buy even this?"

The gaunt man known as Hu San wasn't bothered. He gave a chuckle and ignored the jeers, simply looking at Chen Mo as he held up a finger.

"Young man, I, Hu San, have always done honest business. Your pile of fragments may have lost its spiritual essence, but it's still made of ancient jade and has some research value. I could take it home and study it. Maybe I could even imitate something with it... How about this much?"

He held up one finger.

"Ten silver dollars? Hu San, you're so generous!" someone scoffed.

"Ten? To take it home and prop up a table leg?"

Hu San shook his head, cleared his throat, and raised his voice. He enunciated each word. "Not ten. Ten thousand! Silver dollars!"

"What?!"

"Ten thousand?! Silver dollars?!"

"Hu San, have you gone mad?!"

"All that for this pile of broken jade?"

The crowd erupted!

Ten thousand silver dollars was an enormous sum for most of the low-ranking figures who haunted the Ghost Market!

It was enough to buy decent pills and magical artifacts!

And he was offering it for a pile of broken jade fragments, stripped of all spiritual energy?

What was Hu San, if not out of his mind?